I am a long-term ChatGPT Plus user and a researcher who uses ChatGPT extensively for academic writing, conceptual analysis, teaching preparation, and long-term intellectual collaboration.
I would like to share some thoughts regarding the current product direction, especially the relationship between ChatGPT’s Chat experience, Work/Codex, and the positioning of Plus users.
My concern is that Plus users are currently facing an increasingly unclear position in the product ecosystem.
I fully understand the strategic importance of AI agents, automated workflows, coding assistants, and professional productivity tools. However, for many knowledge workers, especially researchers, teachers, writers, lawyers, and consultants, the core value of ChatGPT is not simply task execution. It is the ability to engage in sustained intellectual dialogue, refine ideas, challenge assumptions, and serve as a long-term thinking partner.
This conversational intelligence is, in my view, one of OpenAI’s strongest competitive advantages.
Work mode and agent-based workflows are valuable, but they should complement rather than replace or weaken the Chat experience. Many professional users may use Work occasionally, but they rely on ChatGPT Chat every day. A powerful agent can complete a task, but a powerful conversational model can become part of a user’s thinking process.
My concern is that if OpenAI places too much emphasis on agent products while the Chat experience for Plus users does not receive the same level of improvement, ChatGPT’s differentiation may gradually weaken.
The reason is that agent capabilities are becoming increasingly transferable. Advanced users can combine different models, tools, prompts, and workflows. A workflow developed with one AI system can often be adapted to another. Therefore, execution capability alone may become less exclusive over time.
In contrast, the long-term relationship between a user and an AI assistant — including conversation history, memory, understanding of personal preferences, and continuity of collaboration — is much harder to replace.
For many Plus users, ChatGPT is not merely a productivity tool. It is a cognitive partner.
Therefore, I would strongly suggest that OpenAI continue to invest heavily in improving the Chat mode experience for Plus subscribers, including:
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Ensuring that Plus users have access to sufficiently advanced models in Chat mode, not only in Work or agent-oriented environments.
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Maintaining ChatGPT Chat as the flagship experience rather than allowing it to become secondary to Work.
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Recognizing knowledge workers as an important user group whose needs are different from developers and enterprise automation users.
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Improving long-term conversational intelligence, memory, personalization, and intellectual collaboration capabilities.
OpenAI’s greatest advantage may not only come from building the most capable agents, but also from creating the most trusted and indispensable AI thinking partner for millions of individual users.
I hope OpenAI considers preserving and strengthening ChatGPT’s original strength while expanding into the agent era.
Thank you for considering this feedback.